Bill Donohue comments on a New York Times editorial in today’s paper:
The American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) is suing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
because the bishops are pro-life. Its pretext is a case involving a
pregnant woman who visited the only hospital in her area, and claims she
was not given information about the option of aborting her baby. The New York Times, which always
sides with the pro-abortion industry against the Catholic Church,
thinks the ACLU is doing yeoman work. But the first sentence in today’s
520-word editorial, along with the last two, prove why my first sentence
is accurate.
The first sentence says that beyond
state efforts to restrict abortion, there is “another, if quieter,
threat [that] is posed by mergers between secular hospitals and Catholic
hospitals operating under religious directives from the nation’s Roman
Catholic bishops.” What scares the Times is diversity: it is
resolutely opposed to the pro-life position of Catholic hospitals, and
wants every hospital to perform abortions. Whenever there is a merger
between secular and Catholic entities, the Times maintains that Catholic First Amendment rights should yield to the non-constitutional rights of secular institutions.
“The bishops are free to worship as they
choose and advocate their beliefs. But those beliefs should not shield
the bishops from legal accountability when church-affiliated hospitals
following their rules cause patients harm.” These sentences are a gem:
in effect, the Times says it is okay for the bishops to say the
rosary. They can even advocate their beliefs! What they can’t do is act
on them. This is what the New York Times believes are sufficient constitutional rights for Catholics in 2013.
Freedom to worship, promoted by the
Obama administration, is a neutered rendition of the more robust, and
constitutionally protected, right to religious freedom; it has a public
dimension. As Pope Francis recently instructed, Catholics should never
settle for less.
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